9/12/2013

No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

262 Responses to “Putin Mocks U.S. in NYT”

Maybe my dislike for the current administration is distorting my view but how can we be sure that Putin’s version of events is any less accurate than the administrations? I can easily envision a scenario such as Putin describes where the rebels target Christian communities with gas to accomplish not only their anti Christian atrocities but with the added benefit of getting some artillery support from the US.

First, he says that the United Nations could collapse and follow the fate of the League of Nations. Well…

1) The United Nations became useless for promotin g anything good long ago, in the 1960s, and it actually promoted war and and protected mass murderers in the 1980s.

There was a WHOLE WAR FOUGHT ALONG THE BORDER OF CAMBODIA FOR TEN YEARS for the sake of a vote in the United Nations.

The government of Pol Pot held Cambodia’s seat for about that length of time after they were replaced by Vietnamese government, over the vehement objections of Jimmy Carter (who had previously stopped Thailand from overthrowing Pol Pot in 1977)

This policy was continued by Reagan. All because of good relations with China. And stupidity.

2) It would be good riddance if the United Nations (or it least its authority) followed the fate of the League of Nations. Putin of course wants the UN to continue to be impoirtant because he has a veto there. It might be good to stop playting along.

Without the United Nations we’d have to decide to things on the basis of right and wrong, not the United Nations Security Council, and not on tghe basis of “international law” which in many ways is on the side of the torturers and the murderers, and in any case it would be easier to change “international law’ because we could decide that preventing mass murder was cause for war.

And nobody would confuse the outcome of a United Nations Security Council vote with what is right or wrong.

3) But the truth is, acting without the United Nations would only moderately undermine it.

4) And furthermore, since Putin doesn’t want the United Nations undermined, he’d likely vote for authorizing things if he knew we would go ahead anyway! (so that maybe he could stop or slow down another thing another day)

And that’s what happened when the United states wanted to invade Iraq.

He claims action independent of the United Nations would undermine efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Of course the United NAtions only prevents a solution. Now some democratic nations, out of ignorance, do respect it, but we could get ore done by telling Russia we’d do things anyway so please vote for a resolution.

Putin will only vote for something that we’d do anyway, AND THE SAME THING IS EVEN MORE TRUE OF CHINA.

China is waiting to use its veto as a weapon for in something very important to it. Before that they are never going to be the only one to veto something.

I think what is funniest about the Putin editorial is all of the ways he describes Obama as similar (or worse) than Bush.
Putin really does know how to get into someone’s head.

OT: Lawyer Humor-
When asked what she does, a caller to Beck says, “I’m a lawyer, but I stay at home, homeschooling my children”.
To which Beck replies, “Bless you; America would be a much better place if more lawyers stayed at home…”

You can bet the phones were burning up between the White House and the NY Times last night.

The Times could always be counted on put a favorable spin on anything Obama did, good or bad. And now the Times was is using its sacred news space to allow arch enemy Putin to put Obama in his place. Liberal New Yorkers (a redundancy) must be having fits. They read the Times to avoid being exposed to agonizing articles like this.

Soon the White House will be put the Times in the same boat as Fox News. As for New Yorkers, there is no place to hide.

Assad is a vicious dictator. The rebels are islamofascists. There are good guys in Syria, but they are caught in the middle.

Russia is supplying this vicious dictator with advanced weapons, profiting from the situation. And Russia has helped make the UN completely useless to address these problems, which largely makes the world less stable.

Obama’s mistake was trying to bluff the Syrians with his red line and then pathetically handling the aftermath, and I think that’s just politics to him.

However Putin is far the worse player in this affair.

To some extent I still think Obama is my president. I wish he wasn’t, but Vlad’s human rights record and oppression of dissidents makes the IRS scandal seem like a visit to Disneyland. The USA needs some credibility and I hope Obama figures out how to get some.

I think the solution is to admit that these weapons were the ones Bush warned us about in Iraq. Which is the truth. This is the attack Bush warned us could happen, and the interfighting between parties squandered much of our opportunity to stop them. Bush couldn’t continue into Syria and we have abandoned many of our friends in Iraq.

There is an opportunity here for Obama to actually be a great president and cross the partisan divide by vindicating Bush and attacking the partisanship that has seeped into foreign policy ever since 2002-2003 or so (but really has its roots in Bush V Gore).

If he does this, should he then attack both sides of distinct evil in Syria, or let them fight themselves? Or do we finally face the real enemy that has so empowered middle eastern violence despite its consequences globally? I hope not, but it would do wonders for the economy.

this latest development in the slow suicide that is Ear Leader’s reign is tasty tasty schadenfreude for those of us who have been pointing out for years his utter and complete lack of qualification for the office he occupies, only to be told by the breathless true believers how awesome our SCOAMF is.

pass the popcorn please, because i can’t wait to see what he’ll F up next. apparently today he’s pivoting back to the economy, which means that’s not going to get better any time soon either.

The problem being that it would take someone great to bridge that gulf in partisanship and Obama is not great. He’s extremely petty and has been for years, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Short term politics has cost him a lasting legacy.

If Assad was going to violate Obama’s Red Line and use poison gas in Damascus where it would be sure to make international news, why wouldn’t he use it against al-Qaeda insurgents instead of against civilians?

Women and children don’t pose a threat to Assad’s forces, enemy fighters do. Putin has a point and Obama assumes facts not in evidence.

Yanno, in 2008 (after my “conservative” family thoroughly mocked me for liking Ron Paul), I wanted Obama to win because I knew he’d fuck up so completely that people would see just how bad it could get and never EVER do that again.

Oy.

Okay, so I was five years too late. And three years to go.

The thing I like here is that Putin pwned Obama (not that the low-information voters [hereinafter referred to as LIVs] would understand) and I’m not taking anything Putin said about “the American people” personally or seriously. He can say/think what he wants about us, but there are a lot of us out here who know who we are and that we are totally independent of Obama and anything an agenda-driven KGB-worldview thug has to say about us is…irrelevant.

Let’s see. The President wants to strike Assad’s government because he insists that if we do not, then our enemies will be embolden to do the same — and insists that the strike will be “limited in time and scope” (aka, “unbelievably small”); then makes his strategy known; then changes his mind in favor of Putin’s proposal; then claims this is really what he had in mind all along.

Along the way, we have to trust him that:
* The evidence is clear — Assad did it
* Putin has our best interests in his heart
* The United Nations can handle it
* We have plan B, which is to arm the rebels (aka: back Al Qaeda.)

So, in a nutshell, the President now supports Assad, Putin and the UN — and our backup plan if that goes wrong is Al Qaeda.

Gotta hand it to the Iranians, the President’s energy and focus is going into their proxy with spectacular results, which will force him to put more energy and focus into their proxy, etc — textbook Kansas City Shuffle.

What makes anyone so sure Obama isn’t doing all this on purpose? That he’s succeeding.

He ran as the anti-war candidate. And if you go back and look at what candidate Obama said, he wasn’t just against the Iraq war but intended to change the kind of thinking and habits that get us into that war.

One of those habits is that the US takes on a global leadership role. If he destroys the United State’s credibility as a global leader, he succeeds.

He also said (and I can’t find the exact quote) that no nation ever maintained it’s military predominance without maintaining its economic predominance.

Did Barack Obama ever do or say anything in his entire life that would lead anyone to believe he thought the US should maintain its military predominance? And look at what he’s done to the economy. An accident?

If he succeeds in flooding the country with millions of largely uneducated, low skilled workers and imposing a massive new, expensive entitlement program complete with the bureaucracy that goes along with it, that will fix two other things.

Our thinking that we can have a strong military. And our habit of using it.

He’s a con man. No con man can rip you off if he tells you up front exactly what he’s going to do. He has to gain your confidence; after all, con man is short for confidence man. And to do that he must lie convincingly. Right now he’s got everyone convinced he’s in over his head. So be it. He’s got three more years of work to do. He has to keep enough people convinced none of this is intentional or he wouldn’t get very far with that work.

They called his bluff, because he forgot to sternly warn them “don’t call my bluff”!

No, actually not. They are very much afraid of what Obama (or the united states) might do.

This Op-ed article by Putin is really kind of desperate./

It might be that he’s not so much afraid the probability is high of Obama taking effective action, as that the downside for him of the Syrian government surrendering or something llike that is terrible.

Because Putin is probably responsible for the Syrian government using poison gas near Damascus.

And that will come out if the syrian government falls, with even one third of the high ranking military members invbolved in this surrendering.

Not because, like Albright, he thinks the main cause of trouble in the world has been the US. Because of the exceptionalism.

Madeleine Albright said during the meeting that America no longer had the intention of being the first nation of the world.

Ms. Albright started her speech in Russian. “Hello and thank you! It’s a pleasure for me to be here,” she said in Russian. Albright wrote in her autobiography that she was trying to learn some Russian during the 1960s.

The former US Secretary of State surprised the audience with her speech. She particularly said that democracy was not the perfect system. “It can be contradictory, corrupt and may have security problems,” Albright said.

America has been having hard times recently, Albright said.

“We have been talking about our exceptionalism during the recent eight years. Now, an average American wants to stay at home – they do not need any overseas adventures. We do not need new enemies,” Albright said adding that Beijing, London and Delhi became a serious competition for Washington and New York.

I don’t think he likes the military at all, but he does like the power it has afforded him (killing people with drone strikes, his gloating about Bin Laden, small “advisory” combat missions in the Congo, etc.) Re: the current Syria thing — maybe he planned it, but I don’t think so because his world view is that of a centralized authority enforcing “fairness.” Syria never entered a treaty that forbids it from using chemical weapons, but that did not initially stop Obama from trying to enforce it. Using “his” military to enforce his world view is right up his ally. To me, he seemed genuinely surprised that the world did not back him up.

Mostly though, our President despises feeling humiliated (recall SNL being told what is off-limits.) He currently looks foolish and is being humiliated — no way he could make that kind of sacrifice, even for a beloved cause. It is just not in him.

It doesn’t matter if these twits get evicted, SPQR, as long as their policies don’t.

I’m also not so sure they’ll be evicted. I never underestimate the GOP’s ability to commit electoral suicide. It’s like they have a death wish.

The GOP is so gunshy about what the left wing media tells them about how the 1995 government shutdown was a disaster that they won’t defund Obamacare. Even though:

- a ever-growing majority of Americans hate Obamacare.

- they ran on a promise to defund Obamacare

- and in 1996 the GOP retained the majority in both chambers, with the GOP picking up 2 seats in the Senate.

But the leftwing media tells them Bob Dole lost because of the shut down. So they don’t want to be “blamed” by the left-wing media over defunding Obamacare.

The don’t realize the GOP didn’t win the presidency because they stupidly ran Bob Dole.

The leftwing media tells the GOP Mitt Romney lost the election because of the Hispanic vote. Even though:

- the Hispanic vote is only 7% of the electorate.

- No Republican has ever won enough of that 7% to have given Mitt Romney the win in 2012

- Had whites turned out in the same numbers in 2012 as in 2008 Mitt Romney would have won.

But because the leftwing media tells them they need to do more hispandering if they want to ever win again, they’ll import and legalize millions more Hispanics. Who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats.

And leading Republicans will again write op-eds that the party’s own white voters are racists if they don’t support amnesty.

Not doing what they said they were going to do, giving the people what they don’t want, and calling their base names isn’t a winning electoral strategy.

But instead of figuring out the GOP lost the presidential election because they nominated Mitt Romney, that’s their plan.

I don’t think even I can hold my nose and vote for whoever Ken Rove tells them is most electable in 2016.

WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush tried to seem bemused Tuesday evening as he helped present a public service award to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“I’m not sure what people expect will happen here tonight,” he said.

Oh, but the political waves that rolled off the stage in Philadelphia: Political icons with eagerly awaited next chapters projected bipartisanship and shared a few laughs. And Bush endured the harsh criticism of the GOP’s right wing for even showing up, even though he chairs the National Constitution Center’s board.

That’s exactly the kind of guy the GOP thinks is electable. Someone who is an “icon” who can project bipartisanship while awarding Hillary Clinton a medal while enduring criticism from the party’s conservatives.

I’m the kind of person who wants to know the real deal details of things like what goes on in restaurant kitchens, or in a baseball team’s locker room, or in a legislative whip session. So, I’m dying of curiosity to know how the Putin op-ed went down and how the discussion among the brass at the Grey Lady building rolled out. Bet it was verrrry interesting as they weighed the pros and cons of embarrassing the Obama administration so blatantly.

Yeah, yeah yeah. But who initially broached the subject? Did NYT court Putin? Or did a Putin representative court the NYT? Was there a bidding war with say, the Washington Post? Were actual diplomatic channels used or did Pootie like post it on facebook and say anybody could share it who wanted it? How did they know it was really him and not a hoax? Was there any sort of rewrite or clean up before it was printed? Did anyone storm out of the meeting? You people have no imagination and would make lousy reporters!

Syrian President Bashar Assad said his nation would give up its chemical arms only if the United States ends any weapons deliveries to opposition forces and ceases its “threatening” behavior. The Damascus leader made the remarks in a Russian television interview quoted on Thursday by the Washington Post.

“When we see the United States really wants stability in our region and stops threatening, striving to attack, and also ceases arms deliveries to terrorists, then we will believe that the necessary processes can be finalized,” Assad reportedly told Rossiya-24 television.

He said Damascus would start disclosing details about its chemical assets one month after signing an international chemical-weapons ban, in accordance with standard procedure. Damascus on Thursday sent the United Nations an intended “accession document concerning the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Reuters quoted an organization spokesman as saying.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry replied that “there is nothing standard about this process at this moment,” due to the Assad regime’s “massive” use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb last month, the Post reported. President Obama on Tuesday warned that failure by the Assad regime to promptly relinquish control of its chemical arsenal could lead to U.S. military action against regime targets, in response to the Aug. 21 incident, which Washington believes to have killed more than 1,400 people.

It was probably done through the KGB agents who run the heroin trade in Mexico. The chauffeur of the Russian consul-general in Matapan approached the girlfriend of Joaquin Guzman who whispered into Carlos Slim’s ear and Slim called Sulzberger. Sulzberger cleared it with his wife and sent the order down to the executive editor of the NYT. A copywriter on staff put it together and emailed it to Putin who signed off on it.

I imagine that Putin has a press office which maintains connections with news organizations including the NYT, and put out feelers for free space on the op-ed page. (You know that NYT has been known to sell that as well, right?) Very, very likely, the promise of an exclusive — not a broadcast letter — was part of the offer, which does not necessarily mean that the NYT was the first approached.

The terminally stupid South Carolina GOP primary voters will nominate Graham again. It was the South Carolina Primary which put McCain on the way in 2008.

In interviews, they said they voted for McCain because he was a “war hero” and had no idea McCain was for amnesty for illegals. Checking the policy positions of candidates is beyond the scope of ordinary Republicans.

Like you, I’m curious if there’s more to this story. Did Putin contact the PR firm or did the PR firm suggest this to Putin? (My guess is it was almost certainly written by the American PR firm.) And I know this is a silly thing to say in today’s world, but what kind of American PR firm would represent Putin?

The Diplomad 2.0 is a very good foreign policy blog written by a retired foreign service officer. The author touched on Putin’s letter in this post, including that he thinks the letter was written by Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

That’s one hum dinger of an article you posted from the Diplomad and if it is representative of the work there I’ll need to bookmark that site and visit often. (Not sure how I’ve overlooked it thus far.) Anyway, DRJ, nk and everybody else — I really do appreciate your scurrying around and doing the research while I cook dinner!

I agree that President Obama has made it clear that he wants the US presence in the world to be less noticeable, just another one of the many nations;
so seeing the US become impotent is not surprising.
But I think the Syria fiasco has not been deliberate, because he has looked so amateurish-
but even as I say that I am remembering how it was reported that he thought his performance at the first debate with Romney went well

I am at a loss to understand why the Times printed the Putin Op-Ed, unless they are just so anti-involvement in Syria they don’t care how skillfully Putin slices Obama up (figuratively).

My 2 cents,
-I think our international credibility as any kind of dependable military force has already been destroyed and nothing short of a major US deployment and victory will ever bring it back
-I don’t think aiding our enemy (Al Qaeda) and allied cannibals is going to help the people of Syria or anybody else, really
-so in my opinion letting Putin manipulate Obama and Kerry into non-action is just as well

But it must throw some people on the left into brain explosions, if they are paying attention, to hear Obama and Kerry channel George W. Bush in proposing we go to war in the middle east-
and do it so second rate
Bush built a coalition over time, had limited UN backing, gave fair warning and a clear ultimatum,
and then actually did what he said.

maybe some on the left will get disillusioned with their guy after all… but then again, maybe not.

at least Bush believed what he said, MD. This is sad… whoever is in the office, it’s never a good thing – in fact, it is damned dangerous – to see our president looking as amateurish and ineffectual as Obama has been, truth be told, ever since he took the oath of office in Jan-2009. Having said that, it can’t be denied that he’s had it coming for a long time.

Colonel-
Yes, Bush believed what he said, and I do too;
that Obama and Kerry are willing to do a mediocre repeat of it suggests how little they believed what they said at the time.
I agree it is not a good thing, in fact a dangerous thing, for our President to appear weak and foolish-
but I think he has long established his reputation, and any military intervention with a purpose of trying to reclaim some credibility is a fool’s errand.

MD – fascinating link. There is no right answer to how much water one should consume. The number of variables that can effect that amount are almost too numerous to count – resting metabolism, activity level, elevation, temp, humidity, diet, age, weight, gender ….

I read the article. While I am not impressed by an effort to get people to drink more water, I am also not impressed by someone who claims to have an MD say that “drinking too much water can be as bad as not drinking enough” without giving any detailed and specific information-
somewhat ironic as his main complaint seems to be the lack of detailed and specific information behind the “just drink more water” campaign.

“Drinking too much water” is a real issue for someone on kidney dialysis and for someone with congestive heart failure (especially if accompanied by salt),
but the idea that the typical person can drink “too much water” is a little far-fetched. Dangerous water-intoxication is hard to do unless you are really trying, certainly nothing that 1,2,3, or 4 extra glasses of water a day will cause.

The boys fencing coach said that as far as being ready to compete, being thirsty meant you were already behind on fluids, and peak mental effort declined before your body suffered effects.
One doesn’t have to measure urine output, just make sure it isn’t dark…

I did know a urologist who specialized in kidney stones who told his patients to “feel guilty if you go by a drinking fountain without drinking”.

you have kids die of hyponatremia at raves on a routine basis because they drink lots of water but don’t take in any lytes.

of course, if i had a dollar for every heat casualty i treated who fell out because they only drank Gatorade because the water tasted like cr*p, i’d have a nice little nest egg.

if your lower back hurts around the hip bones, you’re low on water.

if your urine is dark, or you’re not going several times a day, you’re low too. (of course, if you take multivitamins, expect the first batch afterwards to be bright, because all the excess water soluble ones are kicked right back out.)

(all of the above pertains to your average, reasonably healthy human. those with medical conditions, etc, should consult their personal physician. IANAD, and this is not medical advice %-)

Painted Jaguar (Pensive, with furrowed brow): I am not sure which seems more silly, a big fuss about telling people to drink more water;
or fussing over someone telling people to drink more water.
Besides, we have plenty of water here in the deep dark, turbid waters of the Amazon.
(But you would probably want to boil it before you drank it yourself).

What you specifically said about Fox News several weeks ago is that you had “inside sources” who informed you that Hannity was going to be fired, and also that Ailes would be leaving the network.
That is not happening, so I don’t know why you’re taking a bow.

In addition to being in charge of breaking news, Shepard Smith will still have a show, only it no longer will be on at 7pm eastern.

Neither the parties nor their lawyers can have ex parte contact with jurors, MD, no matter how benign it might be. Lawyers know this and the judge instructs everyone during the trial. It’s unfortunate that one of the prosecutors apparently let meeting a celebrity go to her head.

I thought Hamblin’s article gave about the right amount of seriousness to the subject of Michelle’s campaign as it deserved. Of course, I am not a doctor, but then neither is the chef who apparently is the nation’s “policy advisor on nutition” –or Michelle. I love the “buy-in” and “support” for the campaign by the bottled water companies. And here I thought these days Americans were supposed to drink tap water out of reusable containers in order to lessen the mounds of plastic individual bottles that need to be disposed of.

Elissa – about 14 hours into my last race, my electrolytes were all out of whack, after being towards debydrated earlier in the day, and in typical over-adjustment, had too much salt and I wasn’t processing fluids well. It was just sloshing around, and it was awful. Fortunately, I got it fixed. But simply drinking more is not always the answer, though I will grant, this was a bit more extreme than normal.

JD, I’ve had one experience with electrolyte- out- of- whackness. It is not a pleasant experience as you detailed above.

The millions Michelle is spending on the campaign with no stated goals and with no measurable results or benefits, also bothers me and is so typical of this administration’s lackadaisical approach to spending taxpayers’ money.

I guess I’m late to the conversation, but his take on things does interest me because I originally wasn’t totally sure what motivated him. But when he mentioned recently that he believed Obama wasn’t an extremist due to forces from within but due to forces from without, I couldn’t help but guffaw and snicker. IOW, Sammy seemed to be implying that Obama was arm-locked into relationships with ultra-liberals like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers not because their rhetoric struck a chord in him but because of their great charm and wiles.

WASHINGTON — New satellite photographs showing steam emerging from a newly reconstructed nuclear reactor in North Korea suggest that the country may be making good on its promise to resume the production of plutonium for its small nuclear arsenal, six years after it reached an agreement with the Bush administration to dismantle the facility.

Yup, those credible threats of force really have those dictators scrambling to the negotiating table.

Actually, in a way they do. Just not out of fear for their lives. More out sheer glee. They hear the Obama administration threatening to take unbelievably small military action if anyone crosses their red lines but only if Congress and Putin will let them, and they’re just dying to cross those red lines just so they can get to the negotiation table with these putzes.

Super genius Barack Obama, playing three dimensional chess. While the game at the table he’s sitting at is actually poker.

…“Why don’t Americans and your media pay attention to this crisis?” Ahmad Hasan, who worked as a taxi driver outside Aleppo until his family fled to Amman earlier this year, asked me.

…A strong undercurrent of anti-Americanism also is shaping young minds within the camp. Uprooted and uneducated young men sit idle, spreading rumors and videos of violence back home via social media sites — Zaatari has its own Facebook page — often devoid of context. Boredom and lack of education make for a potent cocktail. Kids I interviewed play a version of war, where one team is the Assad regime and the other is the FSA.

Such populations may be nurturing a new generation of angry Muslim youths who view the United States, and especially its president, as hypocritical at best, and enablers of Assad’s war crimes at worst.

“Everybody is against the Syrian people,” said a former lieutenant in the Syrian military I met in Zaatari, who defected to the opposition. He was sitting on a cot in a prefab caravan, surrounded by other Syrian men wounded in the war. “We’re giving our blood but for Obama that is not enough.”

After cursing the American president in Arabic, he continued, “Obama is ‘Hussein’ – son of Muslims. If he were a Christian he would support us. But he’s a Muslim.” He shakes his head and his eyes tear up. “It’s always Muslims against Muslims.”

I bolded that part so I could take, Putin-like, a gratuitous swipe at President Prom Queen with no prospect of him saying boo about it.

But mostly I quoted this in response to Ron Paul’s idiotic comment on the anniversary of 9/11 that the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon was “blowback” from decades of intervention in the ME.

They also us when we don’t intervene.

In other news, Putin has insisted that as a condition of disarming Syria Barack Obama must show up at all ensuing summit meetings in a skirt and high heels and fetch him drinks.

“This is not a game”: Kerry rejects Assad’s timeline for WMD compliance at meeting with Russian foreign minister

But … it is a game. That’s the whole point. If the White House takes this disarmament charade seriously at the UN with demands that Assad turn over his arsenal expeditiously and verifiably, it’s going to put Obama right back in the war box the way Ryan Lizza described this morning.

I haven’t seen anyone point this out, but Putin had the NYT publish that Op-Ed the night before Kerry met with Lavrov to discuss Putin’s Syrian disarmament scam. Kerry and Obama are big on sending messages. What message did these geniuses think Putin was sending them with the timing?

Smith’s new deal, according to insiders, is second only to Bill O’Reilly‘s in terms of compensation.
FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Shepard Smith will lead a newly established breaking news division as its Managing Editor and continue as Chief News Anchor as part of his new multi-year deal to remain with the network, announced Roger Ailes, Chairman and CEO, FOX News. This move will innovate the way news is presented across the network by escaping the boundaries of the traditional evening newscast.

In the course of this shift, which will take place this fall, The FOX Report with Shepard Smith will be incorporated into a breaking news unit where Smith will dedicate his anchoring, reporting and presentation acumen as domestic and international events unfold. Additionally, Smith will continue to anchor at 3PM/ET with the debut of Shepard Smith Reporting, a new one-hour program which will rely on an extraordinary combination of technologies and social media to bring viewers the latest hard news across all FNC platforms, allowing them to witness how news is gathered.

I think less, because why should he get anything right here – he’s from another place, and would not, certainly by himself, catch things: he wouldn’t understand things that are different than usual in most times and places, not that I’m that close, but there are things you can read….

But it’s not me, but her people who are here that get things wrong where Vlad gets them right. Vlad doesn’t think Obama is bluffing. It’s not me, but you, who thinks Obama is completely bluffing.

Super genius Barack Obama, playing three dimensional chess. While the game at the table he’s sitting at is actually poker.

Putin seems to be very interested in not having Obama show his cards, while Obama is quite
prepared to see Putin’s cards, if it comes to that. What Obama doesn’t want to do is show his own cards! (their “cards” being what they will actually do.)

Putin is looking to see if Obama will fold, which means that Putin is trying to avoid finding out what cards Obama actually holds. (If he was sure Obama held a bad hand, he wouldn’t do that)

To that effect, Putin is pretending to be ready to fold himself. Or saying something that could sound like that maybe, but more probably isn’t that at all.

Obama is taking time out to see if Putin will fold or not (Obama seems to be pressing to determine what Putin’s proposal really is) in which case Obama won’t have to show his cards.

But when he mentioned recently that he believed Obama wasn’t an extremist due to forces from within but due to forces from without, I couldn’t help but guffaw and snicker. IOW, Sammy seemed to be implying that Obama was arm-locked into relationships with ultra-liberals like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers not because their rhetoric struck a chord in him but because of their great charm and wiles.

No, not their charms – their ability to help him advance in politics!

Now you might not think they could advance somebody’s career in mainstream politics, but to Obama they were the mainstream. I think he really truly didn’t realize how out of the mainstream they were, because he was surrounded by people like that.

And they were anyway his best path, because he knew them, and could know them.

What he did in the end, is transition from semi-radical politics into the mainstream. (United States Senator from a big state is definitely mainstream.)

It took some special circumstances to do that, but by the time he did it there was already a precedent from 1992 – win the Democratic primary in amulti-candidate race.

In his case also he had help from people in the background who “disqualified” his main opponents by scandal. This happened both in the democratic primary and in the general election. He was probably being pushed by the Clinto machine, who thought he would be a perfect foil for Hillary Clinton in 2008.)

Now you might not think they could advance somebody’s career in mainstream politics, but to Obama they were the mainstream.

So, Sammy, if everyone around you were ultra-conservatives, you wouldn’t flinch? You wouldn’t feel uneasy and tend to look elsewhere for guidance and support?

Your contention that Obama isn’t innately a leftist — emotionally and attitudinally — would be somewhat plausible if he were a younger man, perhaps out of college and still searching for the Holy Grail. But he’s 51 years old, and as recently as 2008 wanted a devout extremist like Jeremiah Wright to be a major adviser of his.

If I channel your inner thoughts and flip them around, I would have to claim that, for example, Pat Buchanan is not, or the late Robert Welch was not, intrinsically of the right.

Mark, you brought up Sammy’s antecedents and social connections in another context. I, myself, imagine that Sammy is “ultra-conservative” in his personal life. In the sense that matters, and not the loaded religious or political terms. I think he would be perfectly fine with people who shared family values, and responsible and unselfish interpersonal relationships.

I, myself, imagine that Sammy is “ultra-conservative” in his personal life.

nk, you pinpoint the origins and meaning — and irony — of the phrase “limousine liberal.” (And I’ve said previously that one does not have to be wealthy to illustrate that form of behavior where a person talks out of both sides of his mouth.)

If Assad was going to violate Obama’s Red Line and use poison gas in Damascus where it would be sure to make international news,

I think he thought nobody important would care.

Now I’ll tell you someone aupporting the opposition could be involved: convincing Bashir Assad that he could use them with impunity, or that his situation was desperate because the rebels were about to mount a successful attack. Maybe both things. Maybe two different, apparently indepedent sources. One could be is Russia, and the other a person or persons would be rather close to Assad, posing as a strong supporter – and also have no personal ties to any of the people in East Ghouta.

I admit I can’t quite figure this out.

It appears the decision was made WITHOUT CONSULTING THE SYRIAN GENERAL STAFF (per Congressman Alan Grayson) Hezbollah and Iran
were also taken by surprise.

why wouldn’t he use [chemical weapons] against al-Qaeda insurgents instead of against civilians?

Bashir Assad needs al Qaeda!

That’s his biggest argument against western intervention.

No, he used it against a pocket of the opposition that has nothing to do with al Qaeda. al Qaeda comes last.

Women and children don’t pose a threat to Assad’s forces, enemy fighters do.

No. Long-term, women and children do. In certain places he maybe could never re-establish his authrity.

Also, the women will raise children who will grow up and try to kill him or overthrow him, and one way or another, maybe they’ll accomplish something, and Bashir is relatively young is expects to live a long time.

151. …No. Long-term, women and children do. In certain places he maybe could never re-establish his authrity.

Also, the women will raise children who will grow up and try to kill him or overthrow him, and one way or another, maybe they’ll accomplish something, and Bashir is relatively young is expects to live a long time.

Fighters are just a temporary problem.

Comment by Sammy Finkelman (f1bb90) — 9/13/2013 @ 7:35 am

Uhh, Sammy, if Assad never establishes control in certain areas, and women raise children who’ll grow up and try and overthrow and kill him, then that would mean fighters would become Assad’s permanent problem.

To avoid that, Assad has to defeat the fighters preventing him from controlling those areas.

But you think Assad’s first priority would be to kill the women and children who’d grow up in those areas he wouldn’t control. Instead of killing the wolf closest to the sled; the fighters so he can those areas now or in the near future.

I would have to claim that, for example, Pat Buchanan is not, or the late Robert Welch was not, intrinsically of the right.

Robert Welch was, simply, a fraud. There’s no way he could have believed what he was saying.

This is what I believe to be the most likely explanartion for his taking up his cause: He was probably, at the start, being paid by old Joe (Joseph P.) Kennedy to get some Republicans to support his son, John F. Kennedy, for president in 1960.

Welch was a Massachusetts Republican and he was trying to turn Republicans against Eisenhower on the issue of Communism. Joseph P. Kennedy expected this to spill over onto Nixon in the 1960 election.

Pat Buchanan completely reversed his position 180 degrees on Israel. He was later accused of being an anti-semite. I don’t think Pat Buchanan is, or ever was, an anti-semite. He was pro-Nazi. There’s a difference. Pat Buchanan loves violence.

“But I have an education, and opinions, and did so at the age of 13. Obama didn’t know much about history. So he didn’t know they were so wrong about things.”

Sammy – Obama is an uneducated boob. Thanks for confirming.

The only problem with your theory is it defies known history. He hung out with radicals in Hawaii and New York. He wrote about unilateral disarmament at Columbia. He was enamored of Critical Race Theory at Harvard Law School which dovetails nicely with the Black Liberation Theology of Rev. Hatey’s Church.

He had opinions and ideas just like you, and just like you he likes to make stuff up.

Uhh, Sammy, if Assad never establishes control in certain areas, and women raise children who’ll grow up and try and overthrow and kill him, then that would mean fighters would become Assad’s permanent problem.

To avoid that, Assad has to defeat the fighters preventing him from controlling those areas.

That’s not enough.

You’re making perfect sense, Sammy. Please continue.

In certain areas he has to kill (or chase away at least) all the people living there. Otherwise that will never be an area he controls. People will secretly conspire against him.

At least anyway maybe that’s what Putin thinks.

Assad maybe wasn’t buying that, so Putin had to use Russian intelligence reports to convince Assad he was in immediate danger of losing it all, so he would use the poison gas.

But you think Assad’s first priority would be to kill the women and children who’d grow up in those areas he wouldn’t control. Instead of killing the wolf closest to the sled; the fighters so he can those areas now or in the near future.

He needs to clear the whole area, both of civilians and of fighters. He couldn’t move in his own fighters to control those neighborhoods without first getting rid of the population.

==as recently as 2008 wanted a devout extremist like Jeremiah Wright to be a major adviser of his.==

Whether they are friend or foe I think most people in Chicago have long understood that Barack Obama’s foray into Jeremiah Wright’s church was mostly about developing public “street cred” and “entree” for an ambitious bi-racial ivy league transplant community organizer/pol–as opposed to him being a true believer or genuinely admiring Wright as any sort of “spiritual counselor”. Doesn’t everyone realize by now that he uses people and that no one counsels the narcissist Barack Obama and that he has no interest in what other people say or think?

Furthermore, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if Barack Obama actually “sat in the front row” on more than a very few occasions (with or without Michelle and the girls in tow.) That was a convenient thing for his election handlers to say when they were trying to prove that he was really a Christian and to tamp down rumors that he was a Muslim. But it all went kaflooie when tapes of Wright’s sermons came out. What was he supposed to say then? Oh, I lied about regularly going to services in Wright’s church? Of course he wouldn’t do that. But as always, there was a bus for any inconvenient associate like Wright to be thrown under.

It amazes me that smart people who know that most of the narrative of Obama’s life is entirely fictional still accept this particular chapter as gospel truth.

Sammy, I’ve never heard anyone argue that military necessity requires violating the principles of distinction and proportionality.

It’s mind boggling.

People will secretly conspire against him.

Just so you know the basic premise of the Baathist regime has always been that people will secretly conspire against it. Their whole security apparatus was built around that basic presumption. Consequently they have lots of practice inserting their security forces to control areas where not all the people have been killed.

He couldn’t move in his own fighters to control those neighborhoods without first getting rid of the population.

If you get rid of the entire population, Sammy, there’s nothing there to control. You don’t need fighters into a neighborhood to control rubble. Rubble is amazingly docile and can be left to its own devices for decades without causing dictators any trouble.

“As far as Sammy Finkelman being a great military strategist, he is neither a
strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational art, nor is he a
tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that he’s a
great military man-I want you to know that.”

BTW, I don’t disagree with daleyrocks’ observation that Obama had been flirting with radicals and radical ideas for a while. I’m just suggesting that IMO Wright was not a major influence in his thinking. He needed Wright for another very different purpose.

Doesn’t everybody know that? He has a very limited knowledge of history. he only knows what he experienced in his own life, plus a couple of oft told tales about the civil rights movement and the labor movement.

The only thing he was really good at was writing. English composition. Which is maybe all thta alawtyer really needs.

The only problem with your theory is it defies known history. He hung out with radicals in Hawaii and New York. He wrote about unilateral disarmament at Columbia.

He didn’t know enough to know what was wrong with it, or how much it as wrong.

He was enamored of Critical Race Theory at Harvard Law School which dovetails nicely with the Black Liberation Theology of Rev. Hatey’s Church.

That was all networking, not sincere opinion.

When they said something really off the wall, he kept quiet. When the public position was something really wrong, he tried to modify at least what his own position was. He often copunseled absence of hate, and long term planning. I think we’ve gone into this thing a little.

Obama was never a convinced radical. He just hung around radicals for networking purposes.

Remember, he was the compromise candidate for president of the Harvard Law Review, chosen on the upteenth ballot.

Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review’s 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Barack Obama’s advantage was that he was a minority, thus prying away some of the radicals, while he was also mainstream who already worked on the Law Review, and acceptable to the moderates and even conservatives if there were any..

The people who knew him best sized him up quite well. He did not destroy the Harvard Law Review.

He had opinions and ideas just like you

Obama, I think, decided that to get ahead in politics he couldn’t afford to have his own opinions, or let anyone know them anyway.

“Doesn’t everyone realize by now that he uses people and that no one counsels the narcissist Barack Obama and that he has no interest in what other people say or think?”

elissa – Well, we can’t forget about his laughable handling of money during the failed Annenberg Challenge, steering grants to radical groups and afro-centric education initiatives. He was forced into that as well I suppose.

Plus his membership on the Joyce Foundation Board. That was accomplished at gunpoint I believe. His membership in the socialist New Party. He was forced to do that as well.

You are completely delusional, and a lying liar.
You specifically said Hannity was going to be fired, and that Ailes was leaving—neither of which has happened.

By definition of Megyn Kelly taking the 9pm spot, it was immediately clear to everyone that there would be some future shuffling to the prime time line-up, and a lot of people figured it would involve the 7pm eastern time slot occupied by Shepard.

And now you’re doing an end zone dance, as if you successfully placed your money on win-place-show at the Kentucky Derby ?
Your dishonesty elicits me to question the validity of your claim that you even had a daughter at West Point.
I’m beginning to wonder if Bill Ayers has written your fictional life.

Just so you know the basic premise of the Baathist regime has always been that people will secretly conspire against it. Their whole security apparatus was built around that basic presumption. Consequently they have lots of practice inserting their security forces to control areas where not all the people have been killed.

Yes, but the terror was destroyed in those areas that rebelled against him for one year. It would have to be re-established all over again.

SF: He couldn’t move in his own fighters to control those neighborhoods without first getting rid of the population.

If you get rid of the entire population, Sammy, there’s nothing there to control.

Yes, he’d have to give up some wealth and population. But at least he’;d be denying it to an enemy.

You don’t need fighters into a neighborhood to control rubble. Rubble is amazingly docile and can be left to its own devices for decades without causing dictators any trouble.

But it’s only rubble if there’s nobody living there.

His father turned a whole city that had truned too much against him into rubble.

When Syria’s Baath regime feels its back up against the wall, it always resorts to “Hama Rules.” Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian Army leveled – and I mean leveled – a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982. Some 10,000 to 20,000 Syrians were buried in the rubble….Nothing drives a dictatorship like Syria’s more crazy than civil disobedience and truth-telling: when people stop being intimidated, stand up for their own freedom and go on strike against their occupiers

In April 1982, I was assigned to be the Beirut correspondent for The Times. Before I arrived, word had filtered back to Lebanon about an uprising in February in the Syrian town of Hama — famed for its water wheels on the Orontes River. Rumor had it that then President Hafez al-Assad had put down a Sunni Muslim rebellion in Hama by shelling the neighborhoods where the revolt was centered, then dynamiting buildings, some with residents still inside, and then steamrolling them flat, like a parking lot. It was hard to believe and even harder to check. No one had cellphones back then, and foreign media were not allowed access.

That May I got a visa to Syria, just as Hama had been reopened. It was said that the Syrian regime was “encouraging” Syrians to drive through the town, see the crushed neighborhoods and contemplate the silence. So I just hired a cab in Damascus and went. It was, and remains, one of the most chilling things I’ve ever seen: Whole neighborhoods, the size of four football fields, looked as though a tornado had swept back and forth over them for a week — but this was not the work of Mother Nature.

This was an act of unprecedented brutality, a settling of scores between Assad’s minority Alawite regime and Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority that had dared to challenge him. If you kicked the ground in some areas that had been flattened, a tattered book, a shred of clothing, the tip of a steel reinforcing rod were easily exposed. It was a killing field. According to Amnesty International, up to 20,000 people were buried there. I contemplated the silence and gave it a name: “Hama Rules.”

Well, we can’t forget about his laughable handling of money during the failed Annenberg Challenge, steering grants to radical groups and afro-centric education initiatives. He was forced into that as well I suppose.

Plus his membership on the Joyce Foundation Board. That was accomplished at gunpoint I believe. His membership in the socialist New Party. He was forced to do that as well.

The only thing he was really good at was writing. English composition.

/me throws the BS flag.

our SCOAMF is not “really good” at writing. hell, his two books were ghostwritten, and any honest person who has listened to him speak extemporaneously can tell that his command of the English language is just strong enough to lead it on suicide charges.

one can neither write, nor speak, clearly and intelligently unless their mind is so organized. you take Ear Leader off the teleprompter and you get an endless supply of “ummm, ahhh, as i’ve said before, let me be clear, ummm, ahhh, more waffling bullsh1t, ummmm, ahhh, etc” until your brain goes numb from the stupid.

his mostly empty head contains a clutter of leftist cant, a healthy supply of sophistry and the remnants of a third rate education made possible by social promotion and the soft racism of lowered expectations that are inherent with affirmative action.

only another poorly educated fool would characterize Ear Leader as competent.

well, so far we have established that Sam the Sham is an expert on land mine warfare and UXOs, COIN operations in a MOUT environment as well as a leading light in the tactical and strategic use of chemical weapons.

if only i were still in the service, that i might be able to use such brilliance to advance my career.

elissa – I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you either. Calling Rev. Wright his spiritual mentor and his moral compass may or may not have been a beard for Obama. Oprah attended the same church for years. The triumverate of Wright, Pfleger and that other racist preacher gave Obama a lot of Chicago cred.

None. There’s actually a person who used to bring in a few chickens – that was actually something new for our synagogue – and somebody asked today about it – and he said he stopped because one time when he fed the chickens the previous night they made all over the basement and they smelled. And you can always do it with money.

The chickens weren’t killed in the synagogue. He used to then take the chickens somewhere where they are killed – there are maybe two or three spots where this was done – and given away as food for some poorer people.

This custom originated at a time and place when people brought their chickens to someone to be slaughterd every time they ate chicken, and that chicken was the main part of the meal for a family the afternoon before Yom Kippur.

The whole thing doesn’t make any sense except as a demonstrative prayer.

I suppose this might be similar to the Christian doctrine of redemption.

one can neither write, nor speak, clearly and intelligently unless their mind is so organized. you take Ear Leader off the teleprompter and you get an endless supply of “ummm, ahhh, as i’ve said before, let me be clear, ummm, ahhh, more waffling bullsh1t, ummmm, ahhh, etc” until your brain goes numb from the stupid.

When what you are trying to say is wrong, it can’t be too coherent. He’s often supporting things that don’t have much support, or using bad arguments.

elissa, you make some excellent points. Which sort of brings us back to the topic. Putin also knows that Obama has no strategy. Obama’s only interest in whatever serves his immediate political interests.

But there’s the rub. It served Obama’s immediate political interests at the time to join Wright’s church precisely because it was Wright’s church. Everyone in Chicago knew who Wright was and what he was saying in that Church. In fact that’s why he titled his book (more likely the book Ayers ghostwrote for him) the Audacity of Hope. To further associate himself with Wright and further establish his Chicago street cred. At the time Obama was aiming for higher office in Chicago, not nationally, and associating himself would have served that immediate purpose well. He never would have had to disassociate himself from Wright if things had turned out that way.

Which is why it was an obvious lie when Obama threw Wright under the bus by saying he had no idea what kind of sermons the man was giving. Which is sort of unimportant now considering how many obvious lies he’s told since then.

The thing is it’s also obvious that if Wright hadn’t been giving those sermons then Obama would have joined some other well known church where the preacher was giving them. So even if he didn’t believe a word of what Wright was saying, he wanted to associate himself with those words and have people believe they were what inspired him.

Obama never had a strategy. Wright served his immediate political interests for a long time. So he associated himself with Wright. When Wright became a liability to his immediate political interests, under the bus Wright went. Phony or true believer, either way he’s stuck with Wright. And it does provide a window on how he’s going to act for the next three years.

And Putin knows it (hence the editorial). Back in the day these KGB guys had dossiers on world leaders inches thick. And psychological profiles. Snowden may have blown our secrets about how we spy on world leaders friend and foe. Does anyone think the Russians have stopped? Putin has got Obama’s number; he knows what button to push. And no doubt a lot of personal information that if it were made public would be very damaging to Obama. Look at Wright; Obama doesn’t think very far ahead, so he did and does reckless things that he thinks serve him in the moment. The press may not have vetted Obama, but I’ll bet Putin did.

But Putin doesn’t care what Congress does. Putin could give a rat’s arse what Congress authorizes Obama to do. Putin only cares what Obama actually does.

Yes, but it seems like Obama cares what Congress does, or what American pubic opinion is, so Putin does.

Putin’s not playing poker with 535 members of Congress. Just one guy, who doesn’t realize it’s a poker game.

I think he does. What other game does Kerry think Putin might be playing?

Obama I think doesn’t seriously believe Putin is ready to fold. But either for the sake of American public opinion, and votes in Congress or because he senses that Putin is beginning to crack, he’s pursuing this. (in other words maybe Putin will move from pretending to fold to actually folding his cards.)

Do you realize how much Putin is now damaging his own reputation among the American people, many of whom never really knew much about him?

It’s worth it for Obama (or others) taking a time out just to do that.

I think you are in way over your head in your attempts to rewrite history here. When does “networking” which translates into a consistent pattern of behaviors over time, which turn into proposed legislation in both the Illinois legislature and the regulations at the Federal government level actually convince you somebody has sincerely held opinions? Most people who saw Obama operate in Illinois are not surprised by what he has done in Washington because the agenda is so similar. It is by no means “networking.”

172. His father turned a whole city that had truned too much against him into rubble.

And to prove it he quotes an article that says:

Hama Rules is a term I coined after the Syrian Army leveled – and I mean leveled – a portion of its own city, Hama, to put down a rebellion by Sunni Muslim fundamentalists there in 1982.

See, Sammy? Hafez al Assad didn’t have to kill everybody to send in his troops to control Hama. Wiping out the entire population has never been the goal.

And concentrating on women and children as the future threat isn’t strategy. The immediate concern is wiping out the revolt now. Control the area now, not worry about what might happen in the future in areas he not under his control. He left plenty of women and children alive in Hama, even though they had plenty of reason to hate him and want to conspire against him.

Bashar al Assad learned that from his old man, even if you didn’t, Sammy.

“Now the question is: What was wrong with Chicago that that was true?”

Sammy – There is plenty wrong with Chicago that makes this true, probably similar to why corrupt idiots like Rangel keep getting elected in New York and smarmy buttholes like Shumer can win statewide elections in your state.

2. you’ve made my point for me: a person with a trained and well organized mind is able to speak coherently and extemporaneously on any subject they have a w*rking knowledge of, without the need for specific preparation. people who lack the mental training and organization that confers such ability can’t, and become babbling fools when they attempt to do so, as our SCOAMF has demonstrated publicly time and again.

you get his dumba55 off script, and, just like Slo-Joe Biden, his intellectual peer, you never know just what’s going to spew forth, but you can bet your last dollar it will be stupid.

could someone please explain why Putin would, or should, be concerned with what his reputation is amongst the American people?

personally, i think he’s demonstrated great skill in managing a complex situation to advance several of his nation’s interests with little or no cost while, at the same time hamstringing his most likely opposition on the world stage, and not just in relation to this current situation, but overall.

off hand, i’d say he’s read, and understood, more of Sun-Tzu than the JEFH sitting in DC, who likely hasn’t ever even seen a copy, let alone read or understood the principles contained within.

…Unit 450—a branch of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center that manages the regime’s overall chemicals weapons program—has been moving the stocks around for months, officials and lawmakers briefed on the intelligence said.

Movements occurred as recently as last week, the officials said, after Mr. Obama said he was preparing to launch strikes.

…But the imagery doesn’t always show what is being put on the trucks. “We know a lot less than we did six months ago about where the chemical weapons are,” one official said.

Whatever serves this Prom Queen’s immediate political interests. Obama draws a red line. Then he says he didn’t draw a red line. Now Obama says he can wait to strike Syria because it’s not “time critical.”

Every day that goes by we know less and less about where the critical targets are. Not that I’d expect the chemical weapons stockpiles to be targets, but the Assad regime is doing this as much as possible with everything critical to regime survival.

I guess if you’re going to do something pointless, stupid, and futile it’s not time critical. But then futile gestures are hardly going to stop Assad from using chemical weapons, either.

It’s going to take more than lobbing a few cruise missiles into Syria to restore this guy’s credibility. At the rate he’s destroying it all by his lonesome we don’t have enough in the inventory to keep up.

Sammy, you sound like someone suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, with the way you offer up excuses for the bad behavior and judgment by Barry Obama. Please, man, for the love of the country, divorce yourself from this notion that Obama is misunderstood.

At the same time, you also sound like an abused girlfriend who continues to tell her friends, “I know Barry beats me and treats me like crap, but he’s a really sweet guy once you get to know him !”

““Putin is now fully invested in Syria’s CW (chemical weapons) disarmament,” a senior White House official told CNN’s Jake Tapper, when asked to respond to Putin’s op-ed.
***
He put this proposal forward and he’s now invested in it. That’s good. That’s the best possible reaction. He’s fully invested in Syria’s CW disarmament and that’s potentially better than a military strike – which would deter and degrade but wouldn’t get rid of all the chemical weapons. He now owns this. He has fully asserted ownership of it and he needs to deliver.”

If only we could get Obama to write an op-ed to the NY Times on the economy, ObamaCare, Syria, etc., so he would have to own his words — instead of letting everything he says come with an expiration date.

Sammy – If you only read the New York Times for information you will not be an informed person.

Do you think I only read the New York Times? For New York City politics you really have to quote or link to alot of papers. You see my links to the New York Daily News or New York Post. And Wall Street Journal.

I quote from the New York Times a lot because it is easy to search and quote from, and especially on national and international issues, there’s a lot in there. There’s so much you do get evidence of many things, if you just know to look for it.

Except what they sanitize. There’s definitekly things that do not get mentioned there. But maybe if you look enough, you’ll find it.

Even the Iraqi poison gas sent to Syria. It wasn’t mentioned at all in an article published last week about where and how syria got its poison gas, but it was the subject of an article in May 2012.

You see, the United States knows what unit holds them, and what trucks carry them, but now Assad is driving trucks around and we don’t know if the containers are empty or full, or if he’s leaving some at certain sites or not. So now the possible number of loations is up to 50 or more.

Of course, Unit 450 must have an accurate record of where they are, so all we have to do is just demand they tell us. And we can send people to all 50 or 100 locations. (and in truth they may give themselves away and there’s always the NSA)

Another article, which Ill try to find and link later, reveals that Syria was holding back on attacks until about this Tuesday, because they expected to get bombed, and al Qaeda, in the north has also crawled out of hiding because they thought they too could be the targets of Obama’s bombs.

The basic move (swindle) in three-card monte is called the throw. When the cards in three-card monte are tossed to the table, two of them are held in one hand. The bottom card of the two is displayed and tossed to the table. When making the throw, the operator only pretends to toss the bottom card to the table. What he really does is secretly hold back the bottom card and toss the top card instead. Done well, it is a perfect deception. This is how three-card monte is played all over the world. Without the phony throw, the position of the correct card is obvious.

I can also assure Mr. Goldenberg that hiding cards up the sleeve is never done in three-card monte. Unlike the shell game, in monte the correct card is on the table at all times. The monte operator uses the throw and finishes his sucker with the bent corner. In this move, the corner of the correct card is “accidentally” bent up a bit, apparently unobserved by the operator. The cards are tossed again, the spectator gleefully bets on the card with the bent corner and loses — it’s not the right card.

During the previous toss, the operator has not only performed the throw, but has also straightened the corner of one card and bent the corner of the other — all unobserved by the spectator. It is not as difficult as it sounds, however, and a few weeks practice is sufficient for most monte dealers.

But, we have the NSA. Can it beat Putin’s and Assad’s shell game? And if we do, do we get the chemical weapons, or does he get to try again??

Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiations with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov got off to a rocky start Thursday, with the Russian mocking Kerry right at the outset.

“They got off to a really bad start yesterday — partly because of the Putin op-ed and partly because Kerry in the opening remarks spoke at length — and I mean at length — compared to the unprepared few welcoming comments from the Russian counterpart,” NBC News foreign correspondent Andrea Mitchell said on “Morning Joe.”

“And then the Russian minister said at the end, very tartly, ‘Sometimes diplomacy demands silence.’”

No wonder Obama likes Kerry. Not only do they have the same warped world view, they’re both in love with the sound of their own voices.

Of course, Lavrov is just carrying out Putin’s agenda. I can’t wait for Sammy to tell us how this just proves the Russians are desperate and weak.

Eisenhower or Grant could only stand in awe of such a breathtakingly unexpected and daring tactical military maneuver on the part of Bashar al-Assad in response to President Obama’s own clever gamesmanship.

Am I really offering up excuses for Obama? I’m just trying to be more fair and accurate, and resist nonsense.

Then you’ve failed miserably! The NSA is too busy war-gaming against Americans, and pulling crap like this. Weren’t you the one claiming that the NSA wasn’t collecting personal emails, phone calls, etc., as if you know ANYTHING for a fact.
You’re the Cliff Claven of the Patterico blog comment section.

You’ve always struck me`as the type of individual who would stand up for someone who you feel may be being treated unfairly or misunderstood. That is an admirable character trait, Sammy. But it can be taken too far sometimes. When too much benefit of the doubt is given for another’s mistakes, especially recurring ones, it can actually make things worse and can enable or even embolden the person’s actions that led to those mistakes or failures.

Think of the example of a parent who excuses his child’s flunking an important exam. The kid feels terrible and the parent simply can’t accept that the kid didn’t study. So he chooses to defend the kid and make them both feel better by claiming the teacher’s directions for taking the test were faulty or that the teacher is biased, and it wasn’t “fair”. Or the parent who argues that his near perfect child who just got arrested “got taken in and influenced by a bad crowd” rather than accepting that the undisciplined brat’s been behaviorally skating on thin ice for years and is quite possibly a ringleader to the trouble.

Sammy,
The mere fact that you believe that Barry Obama is a defenseless victim of an unfair and inaccurate media reveals that you’re not seeing things clearly.

In fact, many journalists see journalism as a farm system for the Obama Administration.
Jay Carney used to work for Time magazine, and now one of Time’s top editors has resigned his post to work for Mitt RomneyThe Heritage FoundationNational ReviewThe Koch BrothersFox News Channel …the Obama Administration !

I don’t care what you guys say, Sammy’s response to daleyrocks’s nasty “servicing chickens” comment, gives him enough karma points for his own sampan complete with a sing-song girl, floating forever blissfully on the Yangtze, in his next life.

The sad part about Obama saying Putin “owns” the Syria problem is that it reinforces the notion Obama will do anything not to be responsible. It’s the Presidential version of “voting Present” or “the dog ate my homework.”

231.The sad part about Obama saying Putin “owns” the Syria problem is that it reinforces the notion Obama will do anything not to be responsible. It’s the Presidential version of “voting Present” or “the dog ate my homework.”

That’s what drives me nuts? Putin doesn’t care about how he’s perceived with regard to Syria or Iran. If he did, why would Russia keep vetoing UN resolutions concerning these terrorist sponsoring states.

Syria will play the rope-a-dope just like Iraq did. Anyone claiming that Russia’s status will be diminished throughout the global community is a fool.

China’s the same way. They act in their own self-interest, the UN be d@mned.

I think the thing that upsets me the most about the horrible repercussions of the Obama presidency is this: If he had been subject to even the most normal basic elemental scrutiny from the media and quietly within his own party in the earliest days of his administration –rather than being allowed to prance around as some godlike visage who was too precious and perfect to criticize–I believe things could have been different. Not great, mind you, but better.

Of course he’d still and always have the same personality flaws. But I think that from the very start he got so used to saying and doing whatever flighty thing he pleased, and having people rush to cover for him and protect him, that he lost all caution and forgot any sense of the personal responsibility that historically comes along with occupying the U.S. presidency.

Is it possible that Obama is so convinced of his intelligence and judgment that he never follows up on his decisions? For instance, after he uttered his infamous “red line” statement regarding Syria, Michael Barone argues Obama should have ordered action behind the scenes:

As the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus points out, once a president declares a red line, he should be prepared to back it up. He should order military contingency plans, consult with members of Congress, and seek support from foreign governments. There is no evidence that Obama did any of these things in a serious or sustained way in the 366 days between his red-line statement and the use of chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus — not even after British and French intelligence reported the use of chemical weapons last spring.

Obama thinks he’s smarter than anyone working for him, and probably everyone in Washington. Perhaps he thinks that doing due diligence is for lesser Presidents — not for someone of his intelligence and judgment.

If Obama isn’t sure what to do, he will figure it out when the time comes. In the meantime, there are golf games to play and sports to watch on TV. After all, he has to keep his stress levels under control because this is a demanding job.

Sammy, anyone who persists in dealing in such disproven nonsense as this Harvey Morris character can not be believed in anything.

The existence of undeclared Iraqi W.M.Ds was President George W. Bush’s casus belli in 2003. The failure to find them after the collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime led to the conclusion that the U.S. and its British allies had cherry-picked and massaged intelligence reports of alleged hidden weapons in order to justify the war.

You just have to read the AUMF to know that there were many other causes, which is apparently not on this propagandist’s agenda.

As far as nerve gas, no one said anything about Syria acquiring nerve gas or any other chemical weapon from Iraq.

When he said his “red line” statement it was no different that his “if you like your doctor you can keep him” statement–and a hundred others we can point to. They are just words to him. They’re just politically expedient meaningless words and phrases (that sound good and temporarily satisfy the media) to get him past the immediate moment. They have no basis or heft or thought. They are not even lies in the true sense of the word. His pronouncements are like he is speaking lines as the president character in a play about things which don’t ever require follow up, and so he doesn’t ever see the need to.

The sad part about Obama saying Putin “owns” the Syria problem is that it reinforces the notion Obama will do anything not to be responsible. It’s the Presidential version of “voting Present” or “the dog ate my homework.”

Comment by DRJ (a83b8b) — 9/13/2013 @ 2:48 pm

YES

It is classic wannabee Alpha behavior. Alphas do not want to let go of responsibility and control. They do not want to pass the buck. They want to manage the whole thing. But wannabee alphas will think that some vaguely assertive sounding passing of responsibility is a sign of leadership.

It looks really bad to me.

Obama thought his mere awesomeness and his commandment of a red line would do something, after his fanbase around the world has convinced him that he has very existence is some kind of diplomatic success. It’s disturbing he doesn’t won’t have anyone around him who could explain reality.

I can’t tell you, narciso. I spent virtually my entire career in the PACOM AOR. When I got my Expeditionary Warfare Medal for something unremarkable we did off Iran, it was still COMMIDEASTFOR. There wasn’t even a 5th Fleet.

North Korea took most of my time, not like I ignored other countries. I’m sure I looked at Syria, just like I looked at Libya. But if I could remember specific units it would undoubtedly be outdated. They reorganize just like we do. Unit 450 may not have existed 10 years ago when I finished my last active duty stint, just its predecessor.

Well I meant that rhetorically, Steve, in part, we know the Israelis tried to take out one of the facilities, last May, the rebels have taken a crack at it as well, at one of the neighborhoods where Assad had resumed bombing.

elissa @242, they’re just words when other people use them. Remember the deer in the headlights look Stephanopoulos had when he brought out the dictionary to prove that the individual mandate was, no kidding, a tax.

Putin and Assad are the first ones to show him that when he says something, they’re just words. They’re doing to him what he did to Stephanopoulos. And Obama and Kerry don’t know what to do. They have no idea who they’re dealing with.

I liked this line by Steyn, “Putin is cool mainly in the sense that Yakutsk in February is cool.” That and his admission that Putin is a better columnist than he (Steyn) would be a KGB agent.

The Syrian bio threat sounds pretty sophisticated. I must say, I’ve never considered Syria to be a major world threat, but just a country where the dictator was occupied maintaining his control; I guess the most likely explanation is that they would like to take out Israel as much as anybody.

The last time I was witness to a discussion of infectious disease specialists on the threat of bio warfare, it seemed to me they were banking on the threat being so low they would never have to deal with it, rather than having any capability to actually respond to a strike.

As I’ve said before, I think it has been clear to anyone paying attention to Obama that he thinks the US needs to be just one of the many nations on the world stage, not a nation of any considerable influence. He has been about accomplishing this in many ways.
Perhaps the red-line comment was the product of self-delusions of personal importance, it certainly didn’t fit with his priority on “ending wars”.
For example, a common Dem complaint about Iraq was that we did not have a big enough Army to have two battle fronts at once. So what does Obama do? Shrink the military, diminish the Navy, cancel further production of the F-22, the guarantor of US air superiority for the foreseeable future.

Podhoretz said that he felt sorry for Obama’s speechwriters rather than criticizing them, he attributes the problem to the material they have to work with.

Having a military that is too limited to be effective is his desire, but he goofed in getting caught up looking personally foolish.

It’s in the nature of the regime, the Syrian regime, Nazis like Alois Brunner operated out of there in the 50s, supervising a missile program in Nasser’s Egypt, targeting Israel, when the Baath took over,
the former trained their secret police, and the Soviets did the rest,

…The last time I was witness to a discussion of infectious disease specialists on the threat of bio warfare, it seemed to me they were banking on the threat being so low they would never have to deal with it, rather than having any capability to actually respond to a strike.

Oddly, that seems to be something along the lines of what BHO was thinking.

He thought the odds of Assad crossing his chemical weapons red line were so low he’d never have to deal with it, which was good because he never had a politically feasible way to actually respond in any meaningful way if he did.

But since he was running for reelection, and the odds were so low, he thought he’d double-dog dare Assad so he could look tough.

Maybe next time we nominate an infectious disease specialist and not a community organizer.

198. Am I really offering up excuses for Obama? I’m just trying to be more fair and accurate, and resist nonsense.

I don’t buy that, Sammy. If you weren’t as partisan or liberal as you care to admit you (1) wouldn’t do back flips to somehow disconnect the innate leftist biases of Obama from his ultra-liberal buddies, and — this is what’s most telling about you — (2) you wouldn’t be so assertive about the John Birch Society’s Robert Welch and Pat Buchanan in marked contrast to your willy-nillyness about Obama.

Robert Welch was, simply, a fraud. There’s no way he could have believed what he was saying.

Pat Buchanan completely reversed his position 180 degrees on Israel. He was later accused of being an anti-semite. I don’t think Pat Buchanan is, or ever was, an anti-semite. He was pro-Nazi. There’s a difference. Pat Buchanan loves violence.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 9/13/2013 @ 9:22 am

^ The rather ludicrous rationalizing and excuse-making you do for Obama is revealing enough. But the dead giveaway is your scorn and cynicism (“fraud” and “loves violence”) towards two conservatives, or ultra-conservatives, if you like.

BTW, if a conservative tried to imply to me that Welch and Buchanan weren’t really of the right, or didn’t have innate biases that fed off of conservative thinkers in general, that would earn a big guffaw and chortle from me.

Incidentally, if Welch’s innate sensibilities didn’t lean right, then he deserves the biggest, shiniest Academy Award for best acting as a public speaker.

And I always thought a “limousine liberal” was synonymous with dilletante — espousing liberal causes for lack of anything better to do as long as it was not too inconvenient.

Not sure how various people define that term, but if they don’t see the epitome of that evident in the gut reactions of the following liberal Hollywood celebrity, than they don’t fully appreciate the way in which the words “limousine liberal” cast a spotlight on the very unprincipled, very two-faced nature of a good cross-section of the left.

twitchy.com, September 13: As Twitchy reported, John Ekdahl’s BuzzFeed post on all of the anti-war celebrities who went missing in action on Syria was a hit on both sides of the aisle. Cher didn’t make the list, but that doesn’t mean the world isn’t waiting to hear her thoughts on Syria. As it turns out, like Mia Farrow, Cher is pretty hawkish on Syria.

My sense is that Sammy, by contrast, at least isn’t one of those liberals who is so phony-baloney that back in 2003 he would have treated the US battling Iraq very, very differently from the way he’s dealing with the specter of the US battling Syria in 2013. Patterico.com didn’t exist back then, or I (and others, including Sammy) presumably weren’t posting to this forum 10 years ago, so my assumption about everyone’s POV at that time is pure conjecture.

Vlad got everything he wanted in his take-it-or-leave-it plan. A humbled Obama/Kerry said, “Thank you, sir, may I have another.”

It truly is our “Munich moment,” as Kerry said. He and Obama have secured peace in our time!

We can also expect face-saving bleats from those two jokers about how the US will use force if Assad doesn’t comply with this farce posing as a disarmament plan. Which no one can take seriously since Putin and Lavrov just publicly pantsed the two of them.